


Hops, Malt, Water

by escritoireazul



Category: Thunderheart (1992)
Genre: Domestic, M/M, Yuletide 2013, Yuletide Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-25
Updated: 2013-12-25
Packaged: 2018-01-06 00:23:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,118
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1100278
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/escritoireazul/pseuds/escritoireazul
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ray's trying to do something nice for Walter. He pretty much fails.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hops, Malt, Water

**Author's Note:**

  * For [thecarlysutra](https://archiveofourown.org/users/thecarlysutra/gifts).



“Shit.” Ray snatched his hand away from the handle on the five-gallon pot and blew on his fingers. His fingertips were reddened, and the throb of a burn ran along his arm.

Walter snickered. He’d set himself up in the corner, hip against the counter, legs stretched out, faded blue jeans, worn boots, and a cotton shirt washed so many times it was as soft as a cloud. Ray well knew the feel of it between his fingers, though it didn’t look like he’d be touching anything with his right hand any time soon.

“Hot stuff,” Walter said, just a hint of laughter in his voice.

“The handles aren’t supposed to get hot,” Ray snapped, and stepped sideways until he could run cold water across his fingers. “That’s a safety feature.”

This time, his laugh was full throated and loud. “Maybe back in the city you get fancy things like that, protect your soft, pale hands, but out here, our pots get _hot_.”

“Why am I even doing this?” Ray grumbled. “I don’t drink.”

Walter pushed away from the counter and came to stand behind him, resting his hands lightly on Ray’s hips. “You don’t have to drink to make beer,” he said. “Can’t hurt to know how to do that. Impress all the girls.”

Ray tilted his head back and leaned into his touch. “Not looking to impress all the girls,” he said, a little surprised to hear the rumble in his voice. His hand hurt, even the cold water on it stung, but he could feel the press of each individual finger against his hips, and that sort of thing he liked a lot, even the pressure of someone at his back. It’d taken him awhile to learn to live with someone hugging him from behind, and even longer to enjoy it, but now he loved the feel of Walter behind him.

(Mostly. When he came home from an assignment -- and he still had them sometimes -- he kept his back to the wall and his eyes wide open for hours, maybe days, before he could relax enough to be himself again.

He avoided mirrors those times, hating the way his eyes looked so shadowed and so dark, unfathomable and not like him at all.

Even this many years living on the rez, at times, he can feel the weight of the city around him.)

Walter bumped his chin against Ray’s shoulder. “Looked pretty good until you grabbed a pot straight off the burner.”

Huh. He sighed. “Won’t even be ready for you to drink for weeks. Doesn’t look too good to me.”

“Worth waiting for.” Walter’s hands squeezed tight. “Besides, I’ve got a batch that should be aged just enough to be opened tonight.”

Of course he did. Ray shook his head, an exasperated laugh caught in his throat. He didn’t mind that Walter drank, really, he didn’t, but sometimes, the smell of it caught in his hind brain, and adrenaline flooded through him. Fight or flight. When he was little, he would run. When he got older, not so much.

“Sit,” Walter urged, nudging him toward the old wooden kitchen table. “I’ll finish up.” He handed Ray a root beer from the fridge, cold glass bottle soothing against his fingers, and Ray slumped into a chair, glad to be done.

There was something soothing to watching Walter in the kitchen. His movements weren’t exactly _graceful_ , but something better. Precise. Controlled. He did everything with an economy of movement: picking up the pot holders, one starting to unravel in a corner; moving the pot off the stove to cool to room temperature; filling the sink with hot soapy water to quickly wash up. Sometimes he sang to himself under his breath; Ray caught three words out of four now in Lakota if he listened hard, but wasn’t learning it fast enough to suit himself.

Watching Walter, the bend of his back, his ass in that denim, still made Ray hard after all these years. He’d seen him all sorts of ways, in uniform and out, leather pants and hair long and free, damp skin and braids, smirk and aviators, shirtless and jeans, bloody and bruised (and if that never happened again, he’d be just fine), and there was not one single way Ray didn’t like looking at him.

“Ain’t gonna change while you stare,” Walter drawled, not even turning to look. Ray’s skin went warm, but that was okay, too. No one here to see him with his guard down, no one but Walter and the dog, and he trusted them both.

“Nobody’s looking at you, old man.” Ray laughed when Walter flipped him off, and reached for the crumpled newspaper abandoned on the table. He tried to read, but drifted off into a little daydream watching Walter as he finished cleaning up the kitchen, then returned to the beer, siphoning the now cooled wort into the fermenter and added water and yeast, then closed the airlock to keep it sanitized. 

“Čhaŋté skúya,” Walter said, and Ray’s chest tightened. It’s a literal translation of an Anglicism, an idiom finally taken in by the Sioux. Walter always said the words don’t make much sense on their own, but when he said them, he meant _sweetheart_ , and cheesy as that was, Ray liked the way it sounded. “Come on outside with me.”

Ray let the dog out first, and he went scampering out to roll in the dirt until he was dusty. Ray laughed and dropped onto the porch swing. Walter joined him after a bit, three beer bottles threaded through the fingers of his left hand, another root beer carefully held in his right.

They sat, and they drank, and the swing swayed a little beneath them whenever Walter flexed his legs. The dog flopped at the top of the stairs down to the yard with a heavy sigh, and the sun settled slow in the distance, all the reds and oranges and yellows of a sunset taking over the sky.

One by one, the stars came out. Ray knew more constellations now than ever. Once in awhile, he'll sit and pick them out one by one, until he can't name anymore. Sometimes, he asked Walter for stories, and Walter will tell him, voice low and a little rough.

His fingers didn't hurt anymore. He stretched his arm along the back of the swing and rested his hand on Walter’s shoulder. Walter tipped his beer bottle against Ray’s soda, and the dog let out another sigh.

This was not the life Ray would have said he wanted before he came to the rez, but it was better than anything else -- everything else -- he might have dreamed up.


End file.
